59. The WiFi Catastrophe

I knew going into this week that our house would not have internet. Well, I knew the night before we got here that our house would not have internet. What I didn’t anticipate was that Louire Valley also a black whole with no data coverage, and all of the surrounding towns either a) close up shop WAY early in the day - so European - or b) don’t do the whole WiFi thing. Before I go on, let’s all take a moment to recognize that Arden has still managed to lock herself in her room whenever we’re home. No clue what she’s doing in there without people to stalk on social media. Anyway, here I am on April 7^th, my first day to register for classes, and no way to sign up for them until we arrive in Paris. Here is my public apology to my advisor who I’ve left hanging unable to email back, any other people who have emailed me, my loyal twitter followers who haven’t been able to entertain themselves with my insightful tweets, and all of my closest 1000 Facebook friends who might have messaged me. Being off the grid has its perks – no stress, quality family time, movie nights, and an excuse to avoid all types of planning for my future. But I’ll be kicking myself when I have to wake up for lecture at 6:30 every morning fall semester.

But for now I’ll enjoy sleeping in past 8 and sightseeing all day. Today our sight was Guedelon aka Build-a-Castle. This is a place where 35 people got together and decided it would be a super time to build a medieval castle using only medieval tools. It’s like Connor Prairie except for all the people working there speak a different language and everyone ignores you. Apparently our broken French made them uncomfortable or something. We stood around for the French presentations of how to make shingles, dye clothes, and make ropes. In our free time between work huts we played with the electric fence, pet the donkeys and admired the fattest shortest pigs I’ve ever seen.

We carried another English brochure around that gave us a pretty good explanation of what we were looking at. But it didn’t explain exactly what gables were, so we got hung up on that for a while . Other than our guide we had depictions of red castles and green castles telling us which way to go and the no no zones. We were only yelled at once.The actual castle is set to be complete in 2025. The best part of the entire thing was the “murder holes” These are holes that look pretty similar to toilets in old castles. However with these holes, you throw objects down on your enemies to kill them. However they would have to be standing in certain corners of the outskirts of the castle at the right angle for these holes to be effective. Still, I guess they’re nice to have around.

The bottom shows Brody's hand reaching in to test the electric fence. It worked.